You want me to do what? You didnt say it aloud, but you may well have been thinking it when the controller directed, N12345, hold northeast of XYZ on the 050 radial, 20 DME fix, three-mile legs. Expect further clearance at 45 past the hour; time now 20 past the hour. A hold? Who holds anymore?
In fact, Im hearing more and more reports from pilots being put into holding patterns in busy terminal airspace. Most recently, I ran across a friend who flies a turboprop-converted Beech Bonanza, a Cessna Citation and (with a copilot) a Lear 55. He says hes regularly assigned holds in the Dallas area. Frequently hes assigned a hold at a controller-defined fix (e.g., XYZ 050 radial, 20 DME fix) that is not published anywhere on the charts or in his panel-mounted, GPS-driven display database. Its a big problem for a single pilot flying IFR, my friend says.
